I completely disagree with the reasoning you posted. I want to be able to use all the Linux-based tools we already have available, such as the extra modules, testdisk,... I think Porteus is one of the possible solutions for UBCD, *among others*.

You, from your own words, are concentrating on GParted, and you don't care about the rest. I am focused on the opposite direction.

Additionally, you are posting inaccurate information. You link to some "random" old topic with the words "Porteus" and "ntfs", and from that you (falsely) claim that the GParted application in Porteus doesn't support NTFS at all.

Now, let's ask ourselves; can I guarantee that every and all cases are correctly supported by Porteus? Of course I can't. But I *know* that Porteus 3.0 RC1 LXDE i486 (and the GParted application already included) supports NTFS.

Is there any chance that some feature or function might not be supported in Porteus "as-is"? Sure, but I won't be testing each and every one of them.

If I were to find that there is some situation that the GParted application that is already included in Porteus doesn't currently handle, I would report such problem and I would try the very latest updated official release of GParted Live. For such potential case, I would *not* need GParted Live *included with UBCD*; I would just download an updated original GParted Live.

You suggest adding to UBCD some customization of GParted Live; fine.

You are against adding others; fine. You are (falsely) claiming certain things while providing no real proof.

I don't want to write the same points yet again, so please please stop arguing personally with "me". Your arguments in favor of adding to UBCD some customization of GParted Live are already posted, and you are of course free to post more of them, or even a different suggestion altogether.

Now, let's ask ourselves; can I guarantee that every and all cases are correctly supported by Porteus? Of course I can't. Sure, but I won't be testing each and every one of them.

If we are based off gparted live we don't have todo the testing of those features. The developers of gparted have done the testing. Using parted magic again the testing was done by parted magic developers. Porteus is not offering the quality controls.

Now there are other options other than gparted live. http://www.sysresccd.org/ does not have direct support of gparted developers but the people maintaining this are doing it for system repair so again they are doing the testing. Lot of ways sysresccd is worst to customise than gparted live.

Quote:

If I were to find that there is some situation that the GParted application that is already included in Porteus doesn't currently handle, I would report such problem and I would try the very latest updated official release of GParted Live.

ady what is the worst outcome of a partition tool of not being able to correctly handle a partition. Data loss. There is really no secound chance really. If you think running Porteus Gparted having it do the wrong thing that you will be able to put in Gparted live and fix it you are fooling self.

testdisk is in fact default included in gparted live http://geexhq.com/recover-partition-table/. ady I asked before for a list of tools wished for. There is every chance all the wished for ones exist as built in parts into a existing recovery disc maintained by people who will be testing the features for us.

ady if you want to go portus you better be willing to give the time to make sure its tested and works correctly. If not do what I am doing look at the discs that other parties maintain for recovery work.

Other parties maintain is a short list. systemrescuecd and gparted live that is it. Parted magic was the third.

ady the problem here none of the third party pretested are anything like parted magic for that module support. This is the reality. If you want Portus like modules and something tested for recovery work you have to port Portus module system to either debian or gentoo or start a specal distrobution based off Portus and collect the skilled people to test it.

ady you are not answering what I need to hear to back Portus. Quality control is the biggest thing I care about. Gparted is the most tricky part to be right. Gparted is also the most harmful part if its not operating correctly.

ady your constant answer is I could just download and burn Gparted live. I could say that about Portus. UBCD is a recovery and repair disk. Any live cd merged into UBCD has to be quality controlled for recovery and repair.

UBCD would be better off with no Linux Live cd option and making end users add their own than using a distrobution like Portus that is not quality controlled for recovery and repair.

ady the most import rule about recovery and repair don't use suspect tools that can make issues worse.

ady you are just not understanding the problem. A person attempting to go puppy or tinycore or any of those others would have the same response from me. They are not quality controlled for the job.

ady we will be better to work with like gparted live or systemrescuecd and attempt to get them to add extra features.

ady my focus in Gparted is the damage it can in fact inflict. I have not chosen disc that cannot have other tools added.

Basically ady pull your head out sand. Saying untested will be fine is simply not acceptable.

I have been looking at the portus scripts and I am fairly sure I will be able to make them work on debian. I am willing to test if I can make portus module support work with a debian live. I am not a gentoo expert so I cannot see if portus script can be made work with systemrescuecd. Yes the portus support is more a free time interest level so it might take me a month or two.

ady I am listerning to what you want. But you have to get what I class as most critical. Gparted must work correctly if it included on the UBCD. If Gparted does not work correctly we will be risking other peoples data.

Curious, does UBCDNEED a replacement for Parted Magic? Think about it, with tools already included, does one actually need a GUI? And nowadays, many easy to use programs let you add UBCD on a UFD without much effort. We also have tons of tutorials on adding custom entries to UBCD before remastering the ISO. Maybe its time to create a "barebones" version of UBCD?

Xboot, YUMI, and many, many more are just a few someone could use to easily add UBCD to ALL the distro's mentioned here onto a UFD. With this method, wouldn't worry about anything but strictly UBCD and not another distro. Less problems and support required for packages/distro's out of our control.

This would also allow ady (or anyone) to create/modify a distro with what some people may want (I would add it) and they could include it on their UFD/ISO if they so choose, while having to be unofficially supported by UBCD. Just a curious thought, don't take my head off with this suggestion.

I don't remember if this was answered, so please forgive me if it was.

I've always liked having a small distro included that could be used to back up files before running tests and especially for the ability to access the web from an infected PC. That can all be done with a separate distro on the same flash drive (YUMI has worked well for me...)

@StopSpazzing - You mentioned very early in the topic about a "Bare bones or Lite" version. I like that idea more and more but still wouldn't mind having something included. I'm thinking you were not suggesting having 2 or more ISOs to keep track of but just one that has the distro removed.

At this point I'm thinking that may be the best choice by far but only after the included PMagic has outlived it's usefulness.

If Ady, oiaohm or anyone else wants to create a distro (or modules for a distro) that can be included in UBCD that would be great too. These could be added to the "Tutorial or How To" area or create a new "Plugins" section for these. If scripts were created to add these distros to the UBCD ISO that would help some of those that have a hard time doing it themselves.

The Piney and StopSpazzing main reason for wanting gparted/parted is the collection of tools with it.

Yes even with all the tools included by default on ubcd it does not have particular filesystem ones like ntfsfix. Yes you have a windows machine that will not repair by windows install disc there is a chance ntfsfix from gparted live or http://www.sysresccd.org/ or parted magic will bring it back to life.

Part of the reason why gparted has to be audited so much is the collection of tools the fully functional program brings in. Fix most common Linux and Windows filesystems. The other reason why gparted cannot be randomly assembled is one of the reason you would be using gparted is last resort. You cannot afford to stuff around with a last chance to get data back.

gparted live is about as light as you can go and still have audited tools to repair the most common filesystems with.

If you just wanted light I would be saying puppy/tinycore.

Basically if someone says go portus puppy or tinycore I would say no gparted. Not audited not safe to serve up.

The Piney just because you can do something does not mean you should. This is the problem I have with ady. His suggestion need very big warning flags. If this eats your data its 100 percent your fault for using it basically. Gparted live you can put it did go through quality control and hopefully should work correct but backing up is recommended.

It is Porteus, not portus (which you wrongly wrote in prior posts too, which might, perhaps, give some hint about how much you really invested on an actual test at it so to say all that FUD).

oiaohm wrote:

This is the problem I have with ady.

You do? I surely don't.

oiaohm wrote:

His suggestion need very big warning flags.

I don't think you really know how much testing pmagic goes through before its release, and neither Slackware-based distros such as Porteus. Of course, I could be wrong.

IMHO, if anyone is specifically worried about GParted, the only recommended version that should be used is the latest official one. And having a back up is *always* a good practice, independently of *any* other task performed with *any* tool (including GParted).

@StopSpazzing,As long as there is a simple way to have the tools that we already have within pmagic, whether as independent modules or built-in in the main squashfs (testdisk, ntpasswd, AV, clonezilla,...) that are already "expected" by UBCD users, many possibilities are available. My personal concern is with older systems (as those are the ones requiring more maintenance, using UBCD tools, and which usually have much less resources than "current/newer" systems), and with having to invest more time in maintaining / updating the whole set of Linux-based tools in a coherent manner.

For the past weeks, I have tried customizing GParted Live and SysRescueCD, but frankly it is a hair-pulling experience for a relative newbie like myself.

Customizing a Debian Live Build however, turned out to be relatively easy. So far, I have created an LXDE image with the latest version of ntfs-3g, GParted, Clonezilla and the 4 Parted Magic modules (fprot/xfprot, cmos cleaner, regedit, disk eraser) in about two days. The tons of info on the Web helps a lot.

BTW, GParted Live is based on Debian Live Build too, But customizing it was more difficult because of working from a reduced environment.

Let's be clear when we refer to (latest) versions under Linux. For instance, "latest" could mean "latest from current normal repo", or "latest from experimental repo", or "latest stable from upstream", or "latest from upstream development branch".

Victor Chew wrote:

What are the pitfalls on taking this route?

Several thoughts for discussion.

_ Would this customized Debian Live include or allow package management? How _exactly_ the user could customize it? The answers to these two question are *very* important.

_ When a problem would arise in this customized Debian Live, should the user expect support and/or maintenance from UBCD?

_ What's the size of the ISO (not including UBCD)?

_ How many resources this customized Debian Live would require? For instance, just to boot into LXDE, how much minimum RAM and time would be required, without using any aids (such as swap)? (BTW, this is one obstacle for SysRescueCD, and also for PMagic for the last 2 years or so).

_Have you tried *other* alternatives?

The following comment is not going to be a surprise: I am using Porteus 3.0 RC2 LXDE i486 (the stable is out, but I am waiting for some last-minute issues to be solved too). I test it in a VM with 384MB of RAM, PIII CPU, with optional modules from pmagic (I only load them when I need them).

Since UBCD has been using PMagic for several years, I want to give an example of how things could had been different, as a way to show how things could be different for UBCD in the future.

For PMagic, instead of "bloating" the main squash file, it could had been maintained (by its team, not related to UBCD) in "minimal" state, and the "additional packages" could had been “optional additional separated modules” (which are now also squash files). The user could had been more in control, and required less resources. (BTW, this is still possible, thanks to GPL, but I seriously doubt anyone wants to take such path.)

So, back to a customized Debian Live, it could be a "rolling release" based on Debian unstable or Debian experimental, or instead it could be based on Debian "old stable". Or it could be "just a snapshot", without playing with active repositories and updates. These are intended only as examples of how much the future could differ depending on how a customized Debian Live is built, or depending on which distro is used (instead of Debian).

Let's be clear when we refer to (latest) versions under Linux. For instance, "latest" could mean "latest from current normal repo", or "latest from experimental repo", or "latest stable from upstream", or "latest from upstream development branch".

The "sid" repo, which GParted Live is based upon.

Quote:

_ Would this customized Debian Live include or allow package management? How _exactly_ the user could customize it? The answers to these two question are *very* important.

You need to install a copy of Debian "Wheezy" to customize. The exact steps can be provided to create the image.

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_ When a problem would arise in this customized Debian Live, should the user expect support and/or maintenance from UBCD?

Yes, I guess.

Quote:

What's the size of the ISO (not including UBCD)?

Current ISO size is about 250MB, but talking about size now is a little premature at this stage for obvious reasons.

Quote:

_ How many resources this customized Debian Live would require? For instance, just to boot into LXDE, how much minimum RAM and time would be required, without using any aids (such as swap)? (BTW, this is one obstacle for SysRescueCD, and also for PMagic for the last 2 years or so).

I don't have an answer at this stage.

Quote:

_Have you tried *other* alternatives?

As mentioned, I have tried GParted Live and SysRescueCD. Both have been a bitch to customize, with very little online info to fall back on. Maybe it's just me. I would like someone to tell me it's easy and and tell me how.

I would like to customize either GParted Live or SysRescueCD to include lxde, spacefm, most if not all of the Parted Magic modules, as well as the current fprot/xfprot + other modules included in UBCD. Have not had much success on either front.

The way I see it, Porteus and Debian Live Build seem to be about the same cup of tea. Debian Live Build appears to have more online resources behind it in terms of customization compared to Porteus.

So, not the Debian stable repo, and not from upstream.Would it include any kind of package management or update method? Or would it be similar to GParted Live (and PMagic), which is more of a "snapshot", without "easy package manager" and the like? (please keep reading before answering )

Victor Chew wrote:

...You need to install a copy of Debian "Wheezy" to customize. The exact steps can be provided to create the image.

My guess is that this answer implies "snapshots".

Victor Chew wrote:

Quote:

_ When a problem would arise in this customized Debian Live, should the user expect support and/or maintenance from UBCD?

Yes, I guess.

This would imply more work, instead of relying on the distro's own support and only focusing on the extra modules.

Victor Chew wrote:

Quote:

What's the size of the ISO (not including UBCD)?

Current ISO size is about 250MB, but talking about size now is a little premature at this stage for obvious reasons.

Quote:

_ How many resources this customized Debian Live would require? For instance, just to boot into LXDE, how much minimum RAM and time would be required, without using any aids (such as swap)? (BTW, this is one obstacle for SysRescueCD, and also for PMagic for the last 2 years or so).

I don't have an answer at this stage.

Quote:

_Have you tried *other* alternatives?

As mentioned, I have tried GParted Live and SysRescueCD. Both have been a bitch to customize, with very little online info to fall back on. Maybe it's just me. I would like someone to tell me it's easy and and tell me how.

I would like to customize either GParted Live or SysRescueCD to include lxde, spacefm, most if not all of the Parted Magic modules, as well as the current fprot/xfprot + other modules included in UBCD. Have not had much success on either front.

The way I see it, Porteus and Debian Live Build seem to be about the same cup of tea.

They are really not.

Victor Chew wrote:

Debian Live Build appears to have more online resources behind it in terms of customization compared to Porteus.

I won't comment on SysRescueCD, other than I consider it not the best match for inclusion in UBCD, because of its requirements. That doesn't mean it is a bad choice for some users.

There are instructions to customize GParted Live. But, as you already mentioned for Debian Live, it requires Debian itself to start with.

In contrast, while working under a Windows OS (and it could had been under Linux too), I can:1.A_ Download Porteus ISO; or,1.B_ build Porteus from a web page; or1.C_ download the basic modules and customized my own syslinux.cfg.2_ Download extra modules from Porteus' site.3_ Download pmagic txz, or from compatible versions of packages from Slackware/Salix/...4_ Add UBCD's extra modules.5_ Boot into Porteus, convert the original packages (right-click, convert).

I could add more steps, more details, more options. In fact, they are mostly optional, depending on the goal and needs. The ISO image is less than 200MB (not including antivirus' database).

For a user to be able to add modules (aka. customization), Porteus acts similarly as PMagic (add a module file under a specific directory). There are other ways, but a Windows user that never used Linux can follow instructions in its own OS.

For obvious reasons, I am only writing pros of Porteus here. It doesn't mean there are no cons, or that Debian Live has no pros against Porteus.

So, no, I wouldn't say Debian Live and Porteus are the same cup of tea .

So...this brings be to a question, do you think its worth getting a custom page (I can host it if you like, would dedicate it to pure ram as I have the resources and would run fastest) that builds a custom ISO that the user can customize and download like Porteus?

The source code of that site lists "<!-- Written by <hamza@porteus . org> -->" as the creator of that page. I still would like to pursue this... Why? Because I personally don't need the "live OS" and remove that would make more room for other OS's, albeit not a lot but still...could also make it downloadable as a zip giving better compression than ISO..making download sizes smaller. Just curious...

At this point, I got tired of working in the small VM window and decided to install Vmware Tools to get full screen support, clipboard and filesystem sharing. Untar and ran vm-install.pl. Complained "/etc/pam.d" not found. Solved with mkdir. Complained "make" and "gcc" not found. Installed with UMS. Complained "3.13.6-porteus" kernel headers not found. Search for "kernel-headers" on UMS and found only "kernel-headers-3,10.17_smp-x86-3". Installed that but didn't work. Googled for "3.13.6-porteus kernel headers" but nothing.

As I commented before, I am waiting for Porteus devs to solve some last-minute issues (which, at this point, the devs have probably solved already) in the stable 3.0.

Although http://build.porteus.org/ says "Desktop Web Wizard takes an impact on our server resources and bandwidth..." (which everyone should care about), I think (but I have not tried it myself) that the web wizard would build an "updated" Porteus 3.0 (i.e. with the last-minute patches included). The ISO images located at http://dl.porteus.org/ might need to be updated by the user from inside Porteus.

The Porteus package manager in 3.0, USM (http://sourceforge.net/projects/usm), is new (replacing the prior one in Porteus 2.1), and unfortunately Porteus 3.0 was released with a "glitch" related to USM. Coincidentally, Slacky repos were having a problem (supposedly already solved).

USM has both CLI and GUI alternatives. At the time Porteus 3.0 was released, CLI already supported Slackbuilds.org, and "any minute now" the GUI should support it too.

AFAIK, Porteus 3.0 is based on Slackware 14.0 (not 14.1 yet, although in many cases they should be OK too). So repos and packages compatible with Slackware 14.0 (Salix, slacky,...) should work in Porteus 3.0.

All these details might have some contribution to your current experience (but keep reading for a solution that worked for me).

Regarding the conversion of packages (from .deb or whichever), the dependencies are not to be assumed as "automatically resolved" (as happens with every "package conversion" tool under any distro). So there might be cases where, in addition to converting a package into a Porteus module, some dependency might need to be resolved by adding some additional file(s) (I am skipping the howto at this moment, let's go back to it in a later post if necessary).

Regarding "installation", Porteus is not specifically designed to be "installed". Think about it as if it were PMagic; you don't usually "install" it. You "could", but the main usage is "Live". In addition, Porteus includes several alternatives so to be able to save preferences, packages, documents... (aka “persistence” in other distros), so you can optionally boot it "fresh", or with those preferences automatically loaded. This can be done from the syslinux.cfg (or pressing TAB and editing the line), or by moving Porteus files (modules) to one specific directory. In other words, similarly to Pmagic. (Again, I am skipping the details for now, but they can be found in Porteus's website).

While trying Porteus 2.1 (and 3.0 RCs), and with potential inclusion in UBCD in mind, I have *not* used the Package Manager. Instead, I converted some pmagic's txz packages and put the resulting xzm modules under "porteus/modules/" or under "porteus/optional/". To be clear, there are even more alternatives and I am just mentioning 2 that are similar to what we have done with pmagic in the past.

Another example: under "porteus/base/" you can find "003-lxde.xzm" (among others). If someone wants a different DE, just move that xzm from "base", and replace it with a different module (KDE, XFCE, MATE,...). Do you want a different (or an additional) web browser? Add Chrome's xzm, or Opera's, in the same "porteus/base/" directory. You can do it under Windows if you need to.

So, a user doesn't need to know about USM or packages.

To convert pmagic's tar or txz archives, I have not even used the CLI scripts. Under Porteus' file manager, I right-click a pmagic package, and convert it to xzm. Then I move the resulting xzm to "porteus/modules". While rebooting Porteus, the new module is automatically loaded (then find the icon in the LXDE menu). You could try this with UBCD's extra modules (it worked OK for me), and then you could also try this with pmagic's gparted/clonezilla packages/archives (dl' them from pmagic's website).

By testing these minimum steps, at least you could have a basic idea of how Porteus works (similarly to PMagic in many regards). If some specific package has a problem, then we can tackle that issue in particular. BTW, I have other sources where we can take packages to add/update, if necessary.

I hope these tips help. If there are more questions, just ask (or search porteus site ).

Regards,Ady.

PS: I have also added the "devel" xzm module, and I successfully tested it to build a couple of packages from source. It might not be needed for UBCD's users in general, but I thought it might deserve a comment here.

Regarding "installation", Porteus is not specifically designed to be "installed". Think about it as if it were PMagic; you don't usually "install" it. You "could", but the main usage is "Live".

I don't think this is true. From the main page: "Porteus is a complete linux operating system that is optimized to run from CD, USB flash drive, hard drive, or other bootable storage media." So I think "live" is just a starting point. In fact, the Porteus Installer works flawlessly to install Porteus onto the HDD, so I am not complaining here.

Quote:

I hope these tips help. If there are more questions, just ask (or search porteus site ).

I have already laid out my questions, three of them in fact.

1) How do I get gparted-0.18.0-1 (i486) into Porteus?

2) How do I get clonezilla into Porteus?

3) Less importantly, how do I get VMWare Tools into Porteus?

These were the first 3 things I did when I started with Debian Live (in order 3, 1, 2), and it was surprisingly easy for a newbie like myself, with all dependencies automagically resolved.

I can't shake off this feeling that Debian is a more mature system with greater support behind it...

Debian is traditionally prepared to build new OS based on it, as much (or even more) as it is an OS by itself. It is also the biggest community distro. So it is no surprise that you find it easy to build on it.

Regarding GParted latest version, after reading your post I tried to build a new xzm module and load it in Porteus 3.0 LXDE i486. For some reason, I have only a partial success. I'll investigate more. There is a chance my partial failure is related to the fact that an older version of GParted is already installed in Porteus by default.

As I suggested in my prior post, I think it would be useful for you to start with the "extra pmagic's modules" that are already included in UBCD. I was successful with them under Porteus 2.1.

Regarding "installing" Porteus to HDD, I only use the "frugal" installation (equivalent to "installing" to USB drive, just as pmagic).

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